BRICS Under Attack: NWO Tentacles Extending into South Africa*

An undercurrent of political manipulation pulses beneath the surface of popular South African demonstrations organized around legitimate grievances. But who’s pulling the strings? And why?

Sounds familiar…

By Eric Draitser

Leaders of the BRICS nations, from left, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, China’s President Xi Jinping and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, pose for a group photo during the BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, Tuesday, July 15, 2014. The leaders of the BRICS nations are expected to officially create a bailout and development fund worth $100 billion. It’s meant to be an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are seen as being dominated by the U.S. and Europe. (AP PHOTO)

This article is part of a series on Western meddling to foment unrest and destabilize BRICS nations in an effort to ensure the continuation of Western economic and political control over the Global South. The first part, focusing on Brazil, can be found here. Still to come: BRICS under attack in Russia, India, and China.

Major protests have gripped South Africa in recent months as political forces have emerged to give voice to a growing discontent with the government and ruling party. Beneath the surface of these demonstrations organized around legitimate grievances, however, there’s an undercurrent of political manipulation.

South Africa and its ruling African National Congress (ANC) party have been targeted for destabilization due to the country’s burgeoning relationship with China and other non-Western nations, most obviously typified by South Africa’s inclusion in BRICS, the association of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

“We trade more effectively with China because the relationship is based on win-win; mutual benefit that they can get out of the relationship and that we can get out the relationship.”

But recent protests against the ANC government have threatened the ruling tripartite coalition of the ANC, along with the South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions.

A number of groups on the left such as the Economic Freedom Fighters, led by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, and the National Union of Metalworkers, have taken part in the protests touched off by student demonstrations against university fees.

At the same time, however, Western-backed opposition forces led by the Democratic Alliance have positioned themselves as leaders and beneficiaries of the anti-government movement.

The DA, a centre-right liberal political party now fronted by “South Africa’s Obama,” Mmusi Maimane, is lauded by Western financial interests. The American Chamber of Commerce, for example, has consistently heaped praise on DA as the way forward for South Africa.

When Maimane delivered a widely publicized speech at a May 2015 business breakfast hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, he stated:

“While China may have overtaken the U.S. as South Africa’s largest trade partner in volume, the U.S. remains an incredibly important partner for our future growth and development.

I refer to ‘future growth and development’ for under the lacklustre and confused leadership of the ANC, our economy has failed to reach its true potential.”

A careful reading of the subtext offers a clearer understanding of what Maimane is implying. By noting that China has overtaken the U.S. as South Africa’s largest trade partner, he is directly tying the ANC and its “lackluster and confused leadership” to the close relationship with China.

In other words, the DA represents “the future” — that is, a future in which the U.S. is able to reclaim its status as South Africa’s dominant trade partner. This certainly would not have been lost on the attendees at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast. (It should be recalled that the Chamber of Commerce is traditionally seen as the main arm of U.S. economic power projection in the Global South — just ask any leader in South and Central America.)

Democratic Alliance members march in Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2014. The skirmish happened Wednesday after followers of the opposition Democratic Alliance marched near the headquarters of the African National Congress, which has dominated politics since the end of white minority rule in 1994. (AP Photo)

The Wall Street-London connection runs deep

But the ties to the political and financial establishment of neoliberal capital and the U.S. empire do not stop at the American Chamber of Commerce. In 2014 it came to light that one of the principal financiers behind the DA and its short-lived attempt at unity with the centrist Agang SA party, led by anti-Apartheid figure Mamphela Ramphele, was billionaire Nathan Kirsh.

“Mr Kirsh said he provided a ‘marginal amount’ of funding to both the DA and Agang SA … but denied bringing the parties together.

‘I believe there’s got to be an opposition to the government, but I wasn’t involved in the marriage. … When Mamphela [Ramphele] came to me, she represented what could be good, credible opposition and I gave her some money. When [leader of the DA] Helen Zille came to me, she had already shown her ability to put things together and the [Western] Cape runs perhaps better than any of the other provinces,’ said Kirsh.

Zille and Ramphele announced early in February that the short-lived plan to join forces, and for Ramphele to stand as the DA’s presidential candidate, was over.

At the time, Ms Ramphele was quoted as saying ‘a donor pushed the DA and Agang SA together.’”

Kirsh, the business tycoon who heads a multinational business empire controlled through his Kirsh Holdings Group, is one of the richest men in the world, having made his fortune during the Apartheid regime in South Africa and in a variety of other ventures since then.

“the management company that holds Kirsh’s disparate assets, which include two U.S. wholesale grocery businesses, commercial and residential real estate, and private equity investments on four continents.”

Fried is a member of the Bank of England’s Court of Directors and a well-connected executive in circles of high finance.

Fried “takes over [Kirsh Group] from Ron Sandler, the former CEO of Lloyd’s of London who Kirsh said will remain working as a trustee and adviser to the family.” It should be noted that Sandler, who served as chairman of the infamous Northern Rock, had close ties with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, himself a creature of the City of London.

Between Kirsh’s connections to the highest circles of finance capital in the U.S. empire, and his lucrative business dealings with Apartheid South Africa and the current apartheid state of Israel, it should be crystal clear that Kirsh is no progressive. So what’s he doing financing the allegedly “liberal-progressive” opposition in South Africa? To put it simply, Kirsh is making yet another investment that he hopes will pay massive political and financial dividends.

Soft power projects from pro-DA think tanks

Another source of soft power projection from the U.S. empire are the think tanks that uphold the neoliberal DA as the future for South Africa. One example is Legatum Institute, which has published numerous papers criticizing the ANC and calling for “democratization” and “plurality of voices” in the political sphere.

““Together opposition voters constituted just over 34 percent of the national vote. The ANC is understandably proud of its achievements in attracting such a large proportion of votes. However, the weakness of the opposition has reduced the pressure on the ANC to win electoral votes on the basis of its performance in government. It also means that at the national level the ANC’s commitment to democracy has not been put to the ultimate test: the transfer of power to a victorious opposition.”

While the report notes the democratic nature of South Africa’s election, the implied argument, couched in the typically duplicitous rhetoric of Western think tanks, is that the ANC should be unseated from power in order for a truly democratic South Africa to emerge. The report, it should be noted, was edited and overseen by the notoriously anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-BRICS, neoliberal Anne Applebaum, who has repeatedly used her pen and face in the service of the empire’s agenda. (Interesting to note also is that Applebaum is married to Radek Sikorski, the vehemently pro-NATO former foreign minister of Poland.)

One example of Applebaum’s anti-Russia outlook is her widely read 2014 essay in the New York Review of Books, “How He [Putin] and His Cronies Stole Russia,” which argued the typical neoliberal finance capital line that Russia was on the right path in the 1990s under the stewardship of the U.S.- and Wall Street-backed Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his gaggle of thieves, but that Putin and his “kleptocratic KGB apparatchiks” seized control of Russia for their own purposes.

Such nonsense, in addition to Applebaum’s unmitigated warmongering in matters relating to Syria and Libya, demonstrates just what sort of slant exists in her report on South Africa.

Another important element in this equation is an understanding of exactly what the Legatum Institute really is and who funds it. As Pando’s Mark Ames wrote in 2015:

“Legatum turns out to be a project of the most secretive billionaire vulture capital investor you’ve (and I’d) never heard of: Christopher Chandler, a New Zealander who, along with his billionaire brother Richard Chandler, ran one of the world’s most successful vulture capital funds …

Brother Christopher Chandler took his billions to Dubai, where he launched Legatum Capital, and, in 2007, the Legatum Institute … The Legatum Institute’s motto, displayed proudly on its homepage, reads ‘Prosperity Through Revitalising Capitalism and Democracy.’

… [T]he Chandler brothers were the largest foreign portfolio investors in Russia throughout the 1990s into the first half of the 2000s, including the largest foreign investors in natural gas behemoth Gazprom. …

From what I’ve learned, the Chandlers make buckets of fast money by buying into totally depressed and corrupt emerging markets when everyone else is too afraid to, driving up the price of their assets by making a lot of noise about corporate governance and corruption, and then selling out when those investments tick up during what look like to outsiders as principled battles over corporate governance issues. In other words, a form of extreme green-mailing.”

Applebaum’s official title with Legatum is “director of the Transitions Forum,” “a series of projects that examine the challenges and opportunities of radical political and economic change.” No wonder the think tank’s prized propagandist is so gung-ho in her hatred of all things Putin and Russia: Her bosses were directly targeted by Putin and the Russian government as it sought to reverse the “vulturization” of Russia’s economy carried out by Western capitalists like the Chandlers.

It seems then that Legatum is part of the same anti-Russian, anti-BRICS network of Western NGOs and think tanks that includes the International Republican Institute, Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy. And it should come as no surprise that Russia and many other countries have moved so strongly to curtail their presence and influence in their respective countries (this author has written detailed analyses of the political significance of the NGO laws in Russia and China).

Powerful forces aligning

Make no mistake, though: Institutional issues such as corruption and political and economic disenfranchisement do indeed exist in South Africa, and these must be addressed. The challenge against the ANC from leftist forces who seek wealth and land redistribution, socialization of the economy, and other traditional policies associated with leftist politics is to be welcomed. That challenge could likely push the ANC to make much needed policy changes, including moving further away from neoliberal capitalism, as it broadens its engagement with the non-Western world.

However, one should not miss the forest for the trees. There are powerful forces aligning behind the DA and other Western proxy political forces in order to destabilize a key partner of the BRICS project.

Post navigation

Quote…

Peace be upon you and peace be upon us.
May You be in peace and may we be in peace.
Peace be upon those who returned the greeting and even upon those who did not.
Peace, in the name of the lord of peace, the lord of mankind, the god of eternity.
Peace in which we prospered.
Peace mixed with the earth of this country.
Peace in which we no longer live.
Peace which no longer lives in us.
Peace we keep an eye on while it packs its bags.
To abandon our lands, little by little.
And it is replaced by surrender and submission to an islamisation in which there is no islam.
As if the islam of our grandparents no longer had anything to do with us.
Do you know why peace is abandoning us?
Do you know why darkness is all around us?
To put it simply, because we are a society that fears.
We are a society afraid of difference.
My words will not please some of you, or most of you, or all of you - i know.
But i will say them because i refuse to be one of the herd.
We are a society which refuses to admit that it is a society that lives in ignorance.
We are a society that shots with all audacity and pretends that it carries a different message.
We are a society that loves to claim superiority without having a valid reason.
And pretends that it is an educated society. It is sickening!
Among us, the acceptance of difference is nothing but a cover.
The difference in colour does us harm.
The difference in shape does us harm.
The difference in thinking does us harm.
The difference in religion does us harm.
Even the difference in gender does us harm.
That is why we try to kill any difference in our midst.
We have turned into a lethal poison for each other.
We are a society more stupid than stupidity itself.
Yes, we are a society more stupid that stupidity itself.
We fight over silly things, over delusions, over superstitions
While always refusing to look into the root of the problem.
And none of us is innocent of that. No!
No citizens nor politicians.
No those who find comfort in silence.
Nor those who pretend to be saints.
Nor those who follow the west blindly.
Nor those who pretend to go back to the glory of the caliphate and the slave markets.
And to the amputation of the limbs of those who differ.
Today, let us try to look inside ourselves
Inside the depth of our souls.
Let us try to embrace our souls.
Let us try to embrace our differences with our souls.
Here i am, before you, with my colour, with my hair, with my poetry, with my peculiarities, with my ideas.
I am not afraid of you.
I don’t fear that you’re different from me because i am part of you and you are part of me.
Let us create art. Let us grasp the dream.
So we can erect a culture without stupidity,
So our sophistication becomes the best of caliphates.
Let us melt away the traditions, the classes, the types, the ideas, the colours and the religions.
So we see nothing except the human being.

Dance of the Heart

Rejuvenate your Life with Aloe Vera

The pain you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.

On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgement.

On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.

The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment , and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.

The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it.

In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.
Or you may put it like this the more you are able to honour and accept the Now,the more you are free of pain, of suffering and free of egoic mind.

Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the NOW?

Because it cannot function and remain in control without time,which is past and future,so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening.

Time and mind are infact inseparable .

Sunday Wire

Reader’s Reflections…

From Robert on San Francisco Judges Dismiss 66,000 Arrest Warrants against the Homeless*

Living on the streets cuts an average of 25 years from a person's life and degrades the quality of life for everyone. Another feature of the homeless population in San Francisco is that many of these people are simply too ill to care for themselves. We're almost half a century into the failure of the social experiment that closed the State Hospitals and no closer to ending the experiment now than when our media first noticed the experiment had failed in the 1980's.

-------------------------------------

From Chatty on One Corrupt President Ousted*
What do you know, a democratic breath of fresh air SOMEWHERE in the world...amazing. I'm glad the people's voices were heard and the police did their jobs. Fantastic, and I hope South Korea can heal from this and get good leadership.

-------------------------------------

From Joann on One Corrupt President Ousted*

Such a sorry business, sorry for the South Korean people, and sorry for former President Park Geun-hye (so foolish and weak). But I am very glad truth was revealed, and we may hope for fair punishment, and perhaps rehabilitation, involving prison time. This needs to become a world-wide trend.

-------------------------------------

From Necltr on World Bank Declares itself Above the Law*
World Bank, World Loan Shark, to use selected politicians and troops to take over every nation and all of humanity

-------------------------------------

From TheChattyIntrovert on India’s Cashless Villages not Really There Yet, But the Nightmare Has Begun*

I'm too paranoid to believe in a cashless society myself--too much identity theft here in the states, and too damned easy when everything's done electronically.

-------------------------------------

From Mark on Jury Refuses to Convict Activist for Shutting Down Pipeline*

This is why the ruling elite have nearly eliminated jury trials.
If you didn’t know that your democratic rights to trials by jury had been eliminated for everything but felony charges, see http://americanjurypower.org/home/no_right.php and don’t miss the supreme court case at the link in that article in which 5 so-called conservative, strict constructionist justices found an invisible word in 2 clauses in that quaint old constitution in the ruling elite’s latest effort to convert a justice system designed to be controlled by the people into one controlled by the ruling elite.

-------------------------------------

From N on Scientists Find Fluoride Causes Hypothyroidism Leading To Depression, Weight Gain, and Worse…*
For ambitious global tyrants, fluoridation is part of a win-win-win-... program; for at least 6.5 billion people it is lose-lose-lose... Lose mental capacity of ourselves and children, lose length of life, lose, free will ... For the Globalists, win a servile, depopulated humanity with no ability to know what is happening to them, let alone a capacity to solve their problems.

-------------------------------------

From M… on New Report Exposes Rockefeller Dynasty’s Role in “Climate” Scam*
John D., Sr. had a brother, William Avery, with whom he founded Standard Oil and worked until William's death. The families still work cooperatively, like the Rothschilds, but in a smaller way. When you think of petroleum and banking in this country, think Rockefeller. Their man Nixon took us off the gold standard and prevented the silver certificate, replacing precious metals with the petrodollar. Think of global power possibilities with a monopoly of that liquid black gold, especially when accompanied with the fiction of supply limitation held for many decades.

-------------------------------------

From Neben on The Taino of the Caribbean: the People Who Do Not Exist

I am Taino and Caiqueto, living in Georgia. We must unite here in the continental U.S.

My family are indigenous to "Hispaniola", "Puerto Rico", Aruba and Curacao. I have family members in Florida, New York, and other states.

We do and have always existed. These settlers and colonists need to be told our lives matter.

Even if our African brothers and sisters were brought here, or even travelled here on their own (many did), they became us. Not we became them. When you immigrate you assume the tribal identities and customs of the host nation. These colonialists know this so they lie and say our people no longer exist, and/or say that only mixed people and descendants of black slaves exist in the Caribbean. These are all lies. They have brainwashed people into voiding our birthright and inheritance!!!!

-------------------------------------

From Chief Pedro Guanikeyu Torres on The Taino of the Caribbean: the People Who Do Not Exist

I find this blog article most interesting and it made me smile at the same time to see an old letter that my tribal council and I had published in Puerto Rico some 46 years ago and addressed to the Puerto Rican people as it make me feel really old today at 65 year of age today. Respectfully yours, Chief Pedro Guanikeyu Torres, Jatibonicu Taino People of Boriken (Puerto Rico) Tribal Government of the Jatibonicu Taino People of Puerto Rico

Moral Tales

“To be in ‘Islam’ is to be in that state of willingness to surrender, to let go of anything. It is the beginning of the awakening of intelligence . If you’re willing to let go of everything, whatever anxieties, fears, expectations , or desires you have, then your energy is available. Your intelligence sharper. Your actions more successful because you can see whether they relate or not.” – Sheikh Fadhlalla Haeri

List of Genetically Modified Products

Stay connected with RSS

Bottled water without fluoride

Community Notice Board

The topocentric New Moon Conjunction for the lunar month of Sha'aban will occur on Wednesday, the 26th of March 2017, at 22:32 AEST (10:32pm Sydney time).

The correct date to observe the crescent of Sha'aban is upon sunset of Thursday, the 27th of April 2017.

-----------------------------------------

A Sacred Conversation
Tasting the Sweetness of Prayer and Worship by Unraveling the Secrets Within. Practical steps in improving Khushu’ (Inner Concentration) in Salah and other forms of Worship in Everyday Life.
The greatest month descends upon us very soon, the light of Ramadan is fast appearing! Ustadha YASMIN MOGAHED (USA) delivers this FULL DAY Course for the 1st time ever highlighting and demonstrating Key Practical Steps in improving one’s daily relationship with Allah.
The course will cover:
Life’s Forgotten Purpose: Prayer
Practical Steps in Improving One’s Salah and Khushu (concentration)
Worshipping Allah in Every Day Life
Why are my prayers (Dua) not answered? Steps in getting Duas answered.
Following faith in testing modern times, steps in upholding identity.
Developing a sacred relationship with Allah
Searching for God in Everyday Life
SPECIAL FEATURE FOR THE 1ST TIME:
Exclusive Launch and Live Interview based on Yasmin Mogahed’s NEW Book: Love and Happiness. Purchase the copy & have it signed on the day!
Open Q&A Session
Special Guest Speaker:
Ustadha Yasmin Mogahed (USA)

Price: Early Bird discount: £30

Price after 5th May 2017: £35
Date: Sunday 21st May 2017
Time: 10:30am-6:30pm (Doors open from 9:30pm)
Venue: London Muslim Centre (Full details upon registration)
For more info and to book, please visit: www.alburujpress.com

The Radical Middle Way
{Surely they who divided their religion into parts and became sects, you have no concern with them; their affair is only with Allah, then He will inform them of what they did” – An.Anam 6:159).